Friday, Aug. 30

Federal prosecutors bring a new Jan. 6 indictment against Trump after the high court’s presidential immunity ruling. National Democrats are suing the Georgia election board over the new rules pushed by its three Republican members. And, Texas highlights its removal of over one million ineligible voters from its voter rolls — but experts say there’s more to the story.

The federal Jan. 6 case against Trump isn’t over

Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith renewed his election subversion case against former President Donald Trump after the nation’s highest court redefined the limits of presidential immunity.

A federal grand jury returned a new superseding indictment Tuesday charging Trump with the same four felony counts he faced in the original indictment. This time, though, Smith reworked the allegations to conform with the U.S. Supreme Court’s immunity decision. Trump responded in typical fashion, calling the new indictment “ridiculous” in a post on Truth Social.

In a bombshell July 1 ruling, the Court determined that while the president doesn’t enjoy immunity for unofficial acts, he is at least entitled to presumptive immunity from prosecution for his official acts. “That immunity applies equally to all occupants of the Oval Office.” Read more on the decision here.

Trump wasted no time trying to capitalize off of the decision. After a New York jury convicted him of 34 felonies in his hush-money case, his team asked a judge to toss the verdict in light of the immunity decision. Now, he’s facing a new indictment that explains how his alleged actions were not official acts, but were instead the actions of a candidate trying to win at all costs. Read more on how the new indictment compares to the 2023 complaint.

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Texas touts the removal of 1M ‘ineligible voters’ from voter rolls

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott touted the impact of Texas’s three-year-old voter suppression law by announcing the state removed over one million people from its voter rolls.

Over 463,000 of the removed voters were people on the state’s “suspense list,” which means their voter status is unclear, usually due to a changed address. Others removed were deceased voters (over 457,000) and noncitizens (over 6,500).

While Abbott attributed the removal to S.B. 1, a sweeping voter suppression law passed by the Legislature in 2021, experts told Votebeat that federal and state law have long required voter roll maintenance. The federal National Voter Registration Act, for example, allows states to remove voters who have not voted in two consecutive federal general elections and failed to respond to a confirmation notice from an elections office.

Speaking to Votebeat, experts also said it’s unclear how Texas officials compiled the data. “It’s difficult to tell what these numbers actually mean, and the state hasn’t pointed to anyone who actually voted as a noncitizen, and they’ve provided data without context,” said ACLU of Texas attorney Ashley Harris. Read more about Texas’s removal of voters.

Democrats sue Georgia election board over last-minute rules

National Democrats are suing the Georgia State Election Board after it passed new rules that could prolong the certification process in a battleground state.

The Democratic National Committee and Democratic Party of Georgia filed a lawsuit in Fulton County challenging the two rules passed on Aug. 6 and Aug. 19 and spearheaded by the board’s three Republican members.

The first rule says a county board can only certify an election “after reasonable inquiry that the tabulation and canvassing of the election are complete and accurate and that the results are a true and accurate accounting of all votes cast in that election.”

The second allows individual county election board members to “examine all election related documentation created during the conduct of elections prior to certification of results.” In short, the rules give election deniers room to dispute the results based on suspicion of fraud.

While Democrats have decried the new rules, the most emphatic rebuke came from Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), who slammed the board recently for trying to impose “last minute changes in election procedures.” Georgia county election officials also asked the board to pause future rule changes until after the election.

The complaint asks the court to declare that the certification of election results is a mandatory duty under Georgia law. Democrats also asked the court to require that Nov. 5 election results be certified by 5 p.m. on Nov. 12. Read more about the lawsuit here.

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What We’re Doing

This week, News Editor Sally Holtgrieve attempted to teach the finer points of the presidential election process to her son, 5, who declared the Electoral College “kind of weird” and thought a voter roll was a pastry. You can vote for him in 2054.

Speaking of voting, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson joined Marc Elias this week to discuss how Michigan has worked to protect elections this fall, the growing threat of election deniers and what citizens can do to help safeguard voting rights. Watch on YouTube here.